Banff Digital Pathology Working Group: Going digital in transplant pathology

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Alton Farris III, Emory University; Ishita Moghe, University of Alberta; Simon Wu, University of Alberta; Julien Hogan, Emory University; Lynn D. Cornell, Mayo Clinic; Mariam P. Alexander, Mayo Clinic; Jesper Kers, University of Amsterdam; Anthony J. Demetris, University of Pittsburgh; Richard M. Levenson, University of California Davis; John Tomaszewski, SUNY Buffalo; Laura Barisoni, Duke University; Yukako Yagi, Mem Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Kim Solez, University of Alberta
• Language: English
• Date: 2020-04-19
• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Transplantation published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajt.15850
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: American Journal of Transplantation
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 9
• Start Page: 2392
• End Page: 2399
• Grant/Funding Information: We acknowledge the Banff Foundation for Allograft Pathology, the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), their sponsors, and other funding organizations for making the recent Banff meeting possible.
• Keywords: practice; ALLOGRAFT; Banff classification; REJECTION; science; LIVER; Transplantation; basic (laboratory) research; histopathology; Science & Technology; biopsy; SYSTEM; clinical research; Surgery; classification systems; organ transplantation in general; informatics; rejection; pathology; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; FIBROSIS
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery; Health Sciences, Pathology

Abstract

The Banff Digital Pathology Working Group (DPWG) was formed in the time leading up to and during the joint American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics/Banff Meeting, September 23-27, 2019, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the meeting, the 14th Banff Conference, presentations directly and peripherally related to the topic of “digital pathology” were presented; and discussions before, during, and after the meeting have resulted in a list of issues to address for the DPWG. Included are practice standardization, integrative approaches for study classification, scoring of histologic parameters (eg, interstitial fibrosis and tubular atrophy and inflammation), algorithm classification, and precision diagnosis (eg, molecular pathways and therapeutics). Since the meeting, a survey with international participation of mostly pathologists (81%) was conducted, showing that whole slide imaging is available at the majority of centers (71%) but that artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning was only used in ≈12% of centers, with a wide variety of programs/algorithms employed. Digitalization is not just an end in itself. It also is a necessary precondition for AI and other approaches. Discussions at the meeting and the survey highlight the unmet need for a Banff DPWG and point the way toward future contributions that can be made.